Allocation Of Research Funds Research Articles

Publicly funded research: A participative experience from the Chilean Native Forest Research Fund

The concept of public sphere, as put forward by Jürgen Habermas, is an ideal that is difficult to perceive in day-to-day practice. This paper attempts to find, through the study of a specific process of public research fund allocation in the native forest sector of Chile, an approximation of Habermas' public sphere. Chilean Native Forest Legislation has created policy instruments that encourage the participation of civil society in the determination of native forest policies, and established the Native Forest Research Fund, which is instrumental to the application of regulations. Examining the process of research priority setting and the Native Forest Research Fund reveals evidence of communicative action — action oriented at reaching understandings and not personal benefits; supporting the Habermasian ideal. However, strategic behavior of participants from civil society in the process of managing the research fund is also found. Our results offer a starting point towards achieving the Habermasian ideal within forestry-related policy processes in Chile.

Zoonoses in South-East Asia: a regional burden, a global threat

Zoonoses are an issue of growing interest in South-East Asia, where environmental factors and socio-economic context favor the endemization of well-known diseases and the emergence of new pathogens at the human-wildlife interface. However, the health status of the region with respect to many zoonotic diseases remains poorly defined, despite the high overall burden of zoonoses on the countries of the area, and the global risk of new biological threats in the region. The first objective of this paper was to provide an update of data on the zoonoses commonly described by the scientific community and reported by governmental institutions and international organizations in continental South-East Asia. The analysis of the available data led to the identification of some trends in the evolution of the diseases, as well as some gaps in knowledge and in the current surveillance and control networks. In light of these findings, we discuss measures for effectively addressing zoonotic disease issues in South-East Asia, such as the allocation of funds for research and for surveillance and control programs, and a multi-sectoral and multi-disciplinary approach at various levels.

Rate my data: quantifying the value of ecological data for the development of models of the terrestrial carbon cycle

Primarily driven by concern about rising levels of atmospheric CO2, ecologists and earth system scientists are collecting vast amounts of data related to the carbon cycle. These measurements are generally time consuming and expensive to make, and, unfortunately, we live in an era where research funding is increasingly hard to come by. Thus, important questions are: "Which data streams provide the most valuable information?" and "How much data do we need?" These questions are relevant not only for model developers, who need observational data to improve, constrain, and test their models, but also for experimentalists and those designing ecological observation networks. Here we address these questions using a model-data fusion approach. We constrain a process-oriented, forest ecosystem C cycle model with 17 different data streams from the Harvard Forest (Massachusetts, USA). We iteratively rank each data source according to its contribution to reducing model uncertainty. Results show the importance of some measurements commonly unavailable to carbon-cycle modelers, such as estimates of turnover times from different carbon pools. Surprisingly, many data sources are relatively redundant in the presence of others and do not lead to a significant improvement in model performance. A few select data sources lead to the largest reduction in parameter-based model uncertainty. Projections of future carbon cycling were poorly constrained when only hourly net-ecosystem-exchange measurements were used to inform the model. They were well constrained, however, with only 5 of the 17 data streams, even though many individual parameters are not constrained. The approach taken here should stimulate further cooperation between modelers and measurement teams and may be useful in the context of setting research priorities and allocating research funds.

DEA model for assessment of institutional research productivity in Poland

The objective of the article is to present the model concept of measuring productivity in Polish research units through DEA method. It describes the instrument to support management of a research funding allocation by the Polish ministry.

AFL research program strategy for 2012–16

Introduction: Australian Football has established itself as a world leader with injury prevention, treatment and rehabilitation, sport science, coaching, umpiring and volunteer administrators. The AFL Research Board was formed in 1999 to administer the selection of research priorities, allocation of research funding, organization of industry sport science and medicine events and to guide individual research projects. The AFL has an organisation wide five-year strategy for the period 2012–16, and the AFL Research Board has recently undergone the process of developing its own strategy to match the objectives of the broader AFL framework.

PHS92 Allocation of Research Funding in Health Care in Relation to Disease Burden in Europe

PHS92 Allocation of Research Funding in Health Care in Relation to Disease Burden in Europe

Development and pilot test of a process to identify research needs from a systematic review

ObjectiveTo ensure appropriate allocation of research funds, we need methods for identifying high-priority research needs. We developed and pilot tested a process to identify needs for primary clinical research using a systematic review in gestational diabetes mellitus. Study Design and SettingWe conducted eight steps: abstract research gaps from a systematic review using the Population, Intervention, Comparison, Outcomes, and Settings (PICOS) framework; solicit feedback from the review authors; translate gaps into researchable questions using the PICOS framework; solicit feedback from multidisciplinary stakeholders at our institution; establish consensus among multidisciplinary external stakeholders on the importance of the research questions using the Delphi method; prioritize outcomes; develop conceptual models to highlight research needs; and evaluate the process. ResultsWe identified 19 research questions. During the Delphi method, external stakeholders established consensus for 16 of these 19 questions (15 with “high” and 1 with “medium” clinical benefit/importance). ConclusionWe pilot tested an eight-step process to identify clinically important research needs. Before wider application of this process, it should be tested using systematic reviews of other diseases. Further evaluation should include assessment of the usefulness of the research needs generated using this process for primary researchers and funders.

1415PD_PR - Economic Burden of Malignant Neoplasms in the European Union

ABSTRACT Disclosure All authors have declared no conflicts of interest. Malignant neoplasms (cancer) are the second main cause of death after cardiovascular disease (CVD) in Europe and have a significant impact on the healthcare systems of the European Union (EU), on family and friends who provide unpaid care, and on the wider economy and society. Improving our understanding of the economic burden of cancers is essential to help evaluate the impact of public health policies and prioritize the allocation of future research and care funds. The economic cost of cancer was estimated for all the 27 countries of the EU in 2009 as well as the proportion of total cancer costs due to the four main forms of cancer: lung, colorectal, female breast, and prostate. Total costs comprised healthcare costs (e.g., primary care, hospital care), unpaid care costs by family and friends and lost earnings due to morbidity (absence from work) and premature mortality. The same methodological approach was used across countries. Costs were estimated using a “top down” framework by identifying the volume of resources associated with each category within an annual timeframe and respective unit costs. Relevant data were identified from international and national sources, such as the World Health Organisation, supplemented by structured literature searches, and from the analysis of EU-wide individual-patient household surveys, such as the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe. Cancer was estimated to cost the EU e117 billion annually (e234 per EU citizen), with healthcare accounting for 36% of costs (e84 per EU citizen) and representing over 58 million hospital bed days. Lost earnings due to premature mortality and morbidity represented 36% and 8% of costs, respectively, while unpaid care accounted for the remaining 20%. Germany represented 26% of the total EU costs and there was considerable variation on the economic burden per person across the 27 countries. Lung cancer represented 16% of the overall cancer costs, followed by colorectal cancer (11%), breast cancer (10%) and prostate cancer (5%). Malignant neoplasms have a significant impact on the European healthcare systems and society as a whole. The work also highlights the need for comparable and accurate intelligence on cancers in EU-27 and the need for greater evidence based policymaking.

The intellectual influence of economic journals: quality versus quantity

The evaluation of scientific output has a key role in the allocation of research funds and academic positions. Decisions are often based on quality indicators for academic journals, and over the years, a handful of scoring methods have been proposed for this purpose. Discussing the most prominent methods (de facto standards) we show that they do not distinguish quality from quantity at article level. The systematic bias we find is analytically tractable and implies that the methods are manipulable. We introduce modified methods that correct for this bias, and use them to provide rankings of economic journals. Our methodology is transparent; our results are replicable.

An Integrated Impact Indicator: A new definition of 'Impact' with policy relevance

Allocation of research funding, as well as promotion and tenure decisions, are increasingly made using indicators and impact factors drawn from citations to published work. A debate among scientometricians about proper normalization of citation counts has resolved with the creation of an Integrated Impact Indicator (I3) that solves a number of problems found among previously used indicators. The I3 applies non-parametric statistics using percentiles, allowing highly cited papers to be weighted more than less-cited ones. It further allows unbundling of venues (i.e. journals or databases) at the article level. Measures at the article level can be re-aggregated in terms of units of evaluation. At the venue level, the I3 creates a properly weighted alternative to the journal impact factor. I3 has the added advantage of enabling and quantifying classifications such as the six percentile rank classes used by the National Science Board’s Science & Engineering Indicators.

A comparison of cancer burden and research spending reveals discrepancies in the distribution of research funding.

BackgroundIdeally, the distribution of research funding for different types of cancer should be equitable with respect to the societal burden each type of cancer imposes. These burdens can be estimated in a variety of ways; “Years of Life Lost” (YLL) measures the severity of death in regard to the age it occurs, "Disability-Adjusted Life-Years" (DALY) estimates the effects of non-lethal disabilities incurred by disease and economic metrics focus on the losses to tax revenue, productivity or direct medical expenses. We compared research funding from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) to a variety of burden metrics for the most common types of cancer to identify mismatches between spending and societal burden.MethodsResearch funding levels were obtained from the NCI website and information for societal health and economic burdens were collected from government databases and published reports. We calculated the funding levels per unit burden for a wide range of different cancers and burden metrics and compared these values to identify discrepancies.ResultsOur analysis reveals a considerable mismatch between funding levels and burden. Some cancers are funded at levels far higher than their relative burden suggests (breast cancer, prostate cancer, and leukemia) while other cancers appear underfunded (bladder, esophageal, liver, oral, pancreatic, stomach, and uterine cancers).ConclusionsThese discrepancies indicate that an improved method of health care research funding allocation should be investigated to better match funding levels to societal burden.

Intellectual Influence: Quality Versus Quantity

The evaluation of scientific output has a key role in the allocation of research funds and academic positions. Decisions are often based on quality indicators for academic journals and over the years a handful of scoring methods have been proposed for this purpose. Discussing the most prominent methods (de facto standards) we show that they do not distinguish quality from quantity at article level. The systematic bias we find is analytically tractable and implies that the methods are manipulable. We introduce modified methods that correct for this bias, and use them to provide rankings of economic journals. Our methodology is transparent; our results are replicable.

Response to Sasso L (2011) Commentary on Thompson DR & Watson R (2010) Guest editorial: h‐indexes and the performance of nursing professors of nursing in the UK. Journal of Clinical Nursing 19, 2957–2958. Journal of Clinical Nursing 20, 2685–2686

We are very grateful to Sasso (2011) for her commentary on our original piece on h-indexes (Thompson & Watson 2010) and to see that this is an issue that is having an impact outside the UK – albeit that the impact on Italian nursing may be negative. Clearly, we are advocates for the use of the h-index to measure individual academic performance. It is not perfect – no citation based measures are – but it is less easy to manipulate than total citations and provides a number that assesses contribution to a field, through readership and citation of a person’s work, over a relatively long period. Our purpose in writing about this in the first place and subsequently (Hunt et al. 2011) has been to try to develop some norms for our subject and also to begin to make international comparisons. As both our papers show, h-indexes of greater than 10 are very rare among nursing academics – even long-established nursing professors – with only a handful exceeding 20. In the above light, the Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research declaration – reported by Sasso (2011) – that government research funding will only be awarded to those with h-indexes 25 or above is likely to be very damaging to nursing. In the same vein, it is a ludicrous declaration, as nursing will not be alone in having few people with an h-index of 25 or above. As originally conceived by Hirsch (2005), an academic in physics would be doing well to have an h-index unit for each year of academic activity. Using this criterion, only academics with at least 25 years experience would be eligible for Italian research funding, albeit that there are some more highly citing subjects such as medicine. This will skew the allocation of funding to those in the middle years of their career; cutting off people at the start and providing no incentive to those nearer the end of their careers in low-citing subjects who will never achieve an h-index of 25. As Sasso (2011) points out, and in accordance with Jackson et al. (2009) and Nolan et al. (2008), such an institutionalisation of the use of h-indices will lead to some unhealthy activity associated with increasing citations in such a way that they deliberately increase h-index. Foremost, this will be fruitless but all absorbing activity because of the very intractability of the h-index: to increase your h-index by one unit at any level requires that all the papers below the one contributing to the increase have been cited at least as may times as the one ‘on the cusp’. In other words, if you have an h-index of 10 based on the top 10 of your cited papers having been cited 10 times each and no more, then you are required to have a further 11 citations equally spread across all those papers – with citations to any lower cited papers making no contribution – before your h-index will shift. Imagine the effort required to, for example, double your h-index. Therefore, h-indexes certainly have a place and there is a case, for example, for using them in promotions within universities along with a range of other performance indicators. There is no case for giving them priority of place in the allocation of research funding.

Field normalized citation rates, field normalized journal impact and Norwegian weights for allocation of university research funds

We compared three different bibliometric evaluation approaches: two citation-based approaches and one based on manual classification of publishing channels into quality levels. Publication data for two universities was used, and we worked with two levels of analysis: article and department. For the article level, we investigated the predictive power of field normalized citation rates and field normalized journal impact with respect to journal level. The results for the article level show that evaluation of journals based on citation impact correlate rather well with manual classification of journals into quality levels. However, the prediction from field normalized citation rates to journal level was only marginally better than random guessing. At the department level, we studied three different indicators in the context of research fund allocation within universities and the extent to which the three indicators produce different distributions of research funds. It turned out that the three distributions of relative indicator values were very similar, which in turn yields that the corresponding distributions of hypothetical research funds would be very similar.

Differentiering och excellens i det nya forskningslandskapet

This article explores recent changes in research priorities and the allocation of national state research funding. This article also analyzes how changes in research priorities relate to already existing structures of inequality based on gender and race in Swedish academia. More specifically, I have explored - using secondary data, reports, and previous research - the question of where in the academic hierarchy, in what Higher Education Institutions and scientific disciplines, women and men are to be found. In relation to race I have explored which reports and official statistics are available as well as which categorizations of race are used in relation to Higher Education and research policy and its consequences for the sort of knowledge that can thereby be produced. Departing from the intersection of two bodies of theories that are not often related - New Public Management on the one hand and Black Feminism and critical studies on whiteness on the other - this article suggests that the current restructuring of the Swedish research landscape privileges old Higher Education Institutions, academic positions and research fields where women are less represented. The article also suggests that New Public Management principles are integral to these processes of differentiation. Against this backdrop the silence with regard to race, as compared to gender, in Swedish research policy is analyzed as a performative act of whiteness which is produced through norms of Swedish whiteness. I also suggest that these processes could be seen as the legacy of Sweden’s earlier policies regarding registration of ethnic minorities during the race-eugenic area and also of Sweden’s collaboration with Nazi Germany during the 1930s.

Institutional Struggles for Recognition in the Academic Field: The Case of University Departments in German Chemistry

This paper demonstrates how the application of New Public Management (NPM) and the accompanying rise of academic capitalism in allocating research funds in the German academic field have interacted with a change from federal pluralism to a more stratified system of universities and departments. From this change, a tendency to build cartel-like structures of allocating symbolic capital resulting in oligopolistic structures of appropriating research funds has emerged. This macro level structure is complemented by the strengthening of the traditional oligarchic structures of research, carried out by an increasing number of assistants under the direction of a professor on the meso level. The outcome of this institutional setting is a significant gap between the appropriation of research funds according to the allocation of symbolic capital and the production of knowledge in publications. The application of NPM therefore needs to be explained more as a result of the normative pressure of a globally established model of “rational” administration, and less as a result of its functional effectiveness. This is demonstrated by an empirical analysis with simple and multiple regressions using data on the allocation of research grants and publication records of German chemistry departments.

Biodefence and the production of knowledge: rethinking the problem

Biodefence, broadly understood as efforts to prevent or mitigate the damage of a bioterrorist attack, raises a number of ethical issues, from the allocation of scarce biomedical research and public...

Introduction to the AFL Research Program and its relationship with sport science and sport medicine in Australian Football

Introduction: Australian Football has established itself as a world leader with injury prevention, treatment and rehabilitation, sport science, coaching, umpiring and volunteer administrators. The AFL Research Board was formed in 1999 to administer the selection of research priorities, allocation of research funding, organization of industry sport science and medicine events and to guide individual research projects. The work commissioned by the Research Board is one of the key reasons why the AFL has the reputation it does on the international stage. The projects commissioned on an annual basis have benefited the game at all levels. The strength of the program is that topics are nominated by industry partners, meaning they address problems or answer questions that people working in the industry have identified as priorities. While the AFL competition projects usually receive the most attention, such as the annual AFL Injury Report (which has been running for 19 consecutive years), the projects focused on the development of the game at community level have been just as critical in ensuring the continued strength of the sport across all levels of participation. The board comprises a mix of professionals with playing, coaching, business, administration and academic experience. The program has been successful in translating knowledge into action and impact across a number of different areas: developing the capacity of volunteers; enhancing the skills of coaches; reducing and improving treatment of injuries at elite and community level; improving community football environments and respect for umpires; using research as the platform for policy development and evaluation; improving the talent pathway; and improving the preparation of playing surfaces.

The Birth of the Congressional Clinic

This paper studies the impact of mortality in the districts/states represented in key congressional groups (i.e. committees, subcommittees, and parties) on the National Institutes of Health (NIH) allocation of medical research funds across diseases, for the period 1985-2002. Exploiting the recomposition of any group after congressional elections, I find that congressmen who sit in the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies appear successful in steering more funds towards research on diseases that affect their constituents disproportionately. This effect is larger for clinical than for basic research. No other relevant congressional group, except, to a lesser extent, the House majority, seems to impact that allocation. No group significantly impacts the allocation of funds across states.

Cost of Dementia in the Pre-Enlargement Countries of the European Union

Dementia has a significant impact on the health and social care systems of the European Union (EU), on patients, on family and friends who provide unpaid care, and on the wider economy and society. Information about its economic burden will be helpful when deciding the allocation of future research funds. We included the 15 countries who were members of the EU (EU-15) before the Eastern enlargement in 2004. The economic burden of dementia was estimated using patient-level studies and aggregate data on morbidity, mortality, and health and social care use. The same methodological approach was used across all countries. Healthcare and social care costs were estimated from expenditure on nursing and residential home care; and primary, outpatient, emergency and inpatient care, as well as drug treatment. Costs of unpaid care and lost earnings due to morbidity and premature death were also included in the study. Dementia was estimated to cost the EU-15 ${\rm \euro}$189 billion in 2007. 68% of total costs were due to informal care, 26% to social care, 5% to health care and 1% to productivity losses. In conclusion, dementia poses a significant economic burden to European health and social care systems, and society overall. Our results will be helpful for policy makers in evaluating policy impact and prioritising research expenditures. This study also highlights the need for more accurate and comparable dementia-related data across the European countries.